In one in every of my latest posts, I coated the best way to maximise the WiFi speeds for the PS5, PC and Xbox Series X.
It is at all times finest to go together with a wired possibility the place attainable, but when you must use WiFi then a (*5*) is your finest wager.
For avid gamers, WiFi, or extra importantly, Internet connectivity is extra than simply uncooked throughput of knowledge. Ping speeds additionally play a big issue when enjoying on-line. The mixture of a poor web velocity and excessive pings could cause important lag throughout gaming.
The British Esports affiliation states a suitable ping is across the 40ms-60ms mark or decrease. A velocity of over 100ms reveals a noticeable delay and over 170 some video games will reject your connection totally.
If you will have, say a 10ms ping (0.01 seconds), your gameplay will appear quicker and smoother than enjoying with 100ms, for instance.
But how a lot does WiFi negatively have an effect on your ping? And if it does, is it sufficient to have a adverse influence on your gaming?
For testing, I initially used the Netgear WAX610 WiFi 6 access point, I then redid all of the exams utilizing the Netgear RAX120 the next day. Partly to double-check there have been no random numbers, but in addition to see if there was any profit from the elevated bandwidth that the 160Mhz channel width provided over the usual 80Mhz
VelocityTest.Net ping and obtain speeds
A fast take a look at on my PC utilizing Virgin Media M500. Using VelocityTest with 3 exams averaged out.
- Wired – 7 ms connecting at 546Mbps
- Wi-Fi 6 160Hz 2400Mbps – 8ms connecting at 545Mbps
- Wi-Fi 6 80Hz 1200Mbps – 8ms connecting at 545Mbps
- Wi-fi 5 160Hz 1732Mbps- 11ms connecting at 543Mbps
- Wi-fi 5 80Hz 866Mbps- 11ms connecting at 514Mbps
- Wi-Fi 6 2.4Ghz 574Mbps – 9ms connecting at 263.7.3Mbps
- Wi-Fi 5 2.4Ghz 300Mbps – 10ms connecting at 192Mbps
So with this take a look at, there was not a lot distinction in ping throughout the board. Throughput solely began to drop once I used WiFi 5 on the usual 80hz channel. However, if I had gigabit connectivity, we’d have seen Wi-Fi 6 @ 80Hz begin to battle.
Netmeter Ping Test
Netmeter affords a superior Ping take a look at, testing the identical server 100 occasions to supply a extra correct image.
All these exams have been executed in comparatively shut vary to the router, so my recommendation can be to used a wired connection on this state of affairs it doesn’t matter what.
Moving round the home away from the router lowers the throughput significantly, however the ping just isn’t too badly affected with 5Ghz 160mhz Wifi 6 growing by lower than 2ms wherever I’m in the home.
| Avg | Median | Min | Max | Jitter | |
| Wired | 10.1 | 10 | 8 | 15 | 1.1 |
| 5Ghz WiFi 6 | 11.8 | 11 | 9 | 20 | 1.5 |
| 5Ghz 160mhz Wifi 6 | 11.9 | 12 | 8 | 28 | 3 |
| 5Ghz WiFi 5 | 13 | 12 | 10 | 31 | 2.3 |
| 5Ghz 160mhz Wifi 5 | 13.7 | 13 | 11 | 25 | 2.3 |
| 2.4Ghz WiFi 6 | 13.9 | 12 | 9 | 50 | 4.5 |
| 2.4Ghz WiFi 5 | 16.9 | 14 | 9 | 83 | 7.8 |
4G Ping speeds – Using 4G/5G router for your house Internet just isn’t good for gaming
In previous blog posts, I’ve mentioned that 4G and 5G house Internet has turn into a viable various for many individuals. A velocity take a look at on Vodafone offers me the next velocity than I’d be capable of get from BT Openreach fibre (102Mbps/19mbps).
However, for gaming, utilizing cellular information just isn’t nice, even with 5G you’ll introduce important latency.
With Vodafone, I get a median ping of 49ms, a max of 83ms, and a minimal of 37ms. While that isn’t terrible, whenever you mix it with the ping launched from the server location, it might push your recreation into the unplayable territory.
Ping speeds from totally different server places
Server or participant places are the largest think about your ping velocity, however does WiFi introduce any additional delays?
Wired
| no | server | common | median | min. | max. |
| 1 | Ping Test: US – Washington | 95 ms | 95 ms | 91 ms | 100 ms |
| 2 | Ping Test: US – San Francisco | 154 ms | 154 ms | 149 ms | 160 ms |
| 3 | Ping Test: NL – Amsterdam | 24 ms | 24 ms | 22 ms | 29 ms |
| 4 | Ping Test: RU – Moscow | 66 ms | 65 ms | 60 ms | 81 ms |
WiFi 6
| no | server | common | median | min. | max. |
| 1 | Ping Test: US – Washington | 99 ms | 99 ms | 96 ms | 110 ms |
| 2 | Ping Test: US – San Francisco | 155 ms | 154 ms | 151 ms | 160 ms |
| 3 | Ping Test: NL – Amsterdam | 26 ms | 26 ms | 23 ms | 35 ms |
| 4 | Ping Test: RU – Moscow | 66 ms | 65 ms | 63 ms | 82 ms |
WiFi 5
| no | server | common | median | min. | max. |
| 1 | Ping Test: US – Washington | 100 ms | 100 ms | 95 ms | 108 ms |
| 2 | Ping Test: US – San Francisco | 157 ms | 157 ms | 155 ms | 160 ms |
| 3 | Ping Test: NL – Amsterdam | 31 ms | 30 ms | 28 ms | 39 ms |
| 4 | Ping Test: RU – Moscow | 70 ms | 69 ms | 67 ms | 76 ms |
So as you the gaming server turns into additional away, the small variations in the way you connect with your LAN begin to look much more insignificant. While there’s a 29% increase in Ping with the Amsterdam servers on wired vs WiFi 5, this drops right down to 5.2% for the Washington server.
Overall
My outcomes usually are not precisely an excessive amount of of a shock. The time it takes to ping you router, no matter connection medium, is a negligible issue within the general ping speeds you’ll expertise whereas gaming.
One issue I’ve not examined is QoS and the way numerous customers on the identical LAN could have an effect on your ping. I’m in a family of two, so it’s a little troublesome to precisely take a look at this.
Use a gaming router to enhance your ping
My exams reveal there’s a sturdy case for not spending your cash on costly gaming oriented networking gear. Unless you will have an ultra-fast Internet connection, you in all probability don’t want a WiFi 6 router to get the perfect speeds on the PS5 or PC, and the Xbox is already restricted to WiFi 5.
If you will have a particularily congested community, similar to a big family all of whom use bandwidth-heavy functions, then a fancier router could assist. It ought to give you superior high quality of service options vs your bog-standard ISP router.
With your native community not being the foremost explanation for a gradual ping, the perfect resolution to laggy on-line gaming is to seek out gamers or servers that provide a low ping.
Technically, that is might be fairly simple, if the sport affords an choice to manually choose a server you’ll be able to decide one near you, or in some circumstances, video games can even show the ping of that server.
There are some routers that assist with this. The (*6*) which runs DumaOS has superior performance that permits you to keep away from lag-heavy matchups.
With the Geo-Fencing device, you’ll be able to choose server areas permitting you to retrict which servers you connect with by each location and ping.
There is then a Ping Heatmap which pings each server for your recreation of alternative and visualises your latency to every one – briefly, you’ll see which servers provide the smoothest gameplay. The heatmap is regularly up to date with the latest video games, so you’ll be able to nonetheless have the benefit on model new releases.
An various possibility, which I’ve not tried personally, is the ASUS GT-AX11000 ROG Rapture which incorporates built-in help for the Gamers Private Network, powered by WTFast, which claims to supply personal, optimized web connections to recreation servers, minimizing ping and latency to make sure clean, lag-free gaming.
Last replace on 2021-04-20 / Affiliate hyperlinks / Images from Amazon Product Advertising API
